Acceptance has been on my mind more than usual lately as I’ve struggled to accept certain things in my life and the world as a whole. I’ve also noticed people around me and society as a whole struggle to accept what is. Through these observations, I realized that even though I’ve mentioned acceptance in many of my writings, I’ve never actually defined it or gone into much depth as to what I mean when I say acceptance. 

And it’s really important that I clarify this because so many people have misconceptions as to what acceptance actually is. Many think that acceptance is resignation, that we just have to allow everything that happens to us happen to us without any recourse. We can’t be angry. We can’t create change. We have to say, oh that’s okay, no matter what anyone is doing to us. People can do horrible things to us or others and we just say, oh, well, that’s the way it is. 

That actually isn’t acceptance at all.

Acceptance is simply the acknowledgement of your current experience without judgment. That includes the objective outer situation, who, what, where, when, how, anything observable through the senses of sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste. It also includes our inner experience, our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. 

So if someone were to come up to you on the street and start cussing at you, acceptance of the situation would be acknowledging that a person walked up to you and stood two feet away, yelling, “You bleepity bleep bleep. I bleepity bleep bleep, blah, blah blah.” It would also mean acknowledging that your heart rate increased, your body stiffened, you clenched your fists, you felt afraid and then angry, and you thought, “I’m going to punch this person’s lights out. They’re absolutely crazy.” Or whatever your experience in that situation was. 

Acceptance isn’t just for challenging situations like the one above. Acceptance is helpful in every moment, even the ones we’d judge as more positive. For instance, you’re walking in the evening, the sun begins to set, and you stop to watch. Acknowledging that moment would be that you were walking and then you stopped in the grass on the cliff to look at the sun setting on the ocean. You feel a deep inner calm and think, “This is beautiful.”

The key to acceptance in any situation is to not get caught up in any more than it is. It’s usually easier to practice in situations we prefer, such as watching the sunset (Unless that is a situation you don’t prefer, in which case insert a situation you do prefer.), so we don’t think much about acceptance there. Although, we can get caught up in our heads, not wanting a moment of pleasure to end, and then we aren’t actually present for it or enjoy it as fully as we would have otherwise.

Generally, though, acceptance is more difficult when we’re experiencing a situation and/or emotions we don’t want to be experiencing. This is where we fight acceptance because we believe that we’re resigning to what is and we’ll be stuck with it forever. That accepting it communicates that a situation is okay even when we don’t think it is. There’s a fear that accepting that a person is cussing us out, means allowing them to always yell obscenities at us. Accepting that people do horrible things to other people means we have to let them continue to do horrible things to other people.

Acceptance isn’t saying something that isn’t okay is okay. Or that you can’t take action to change future situations. 

Acceptance just gives us some peace during difficult times. It allows us to be present enough that we can make decisions and take action that is most effective given the situation. Sometimes that will mean taking overt action and doing something to make a situation better. For example if you’re hungry and there’s food around, acknowledging both of those factors might lead you to eat some of that food so that you’re no longer hungry. Sometimes it means that we have to sit with discomfort for longer than we’d like because there is no immediate action we can take. If we’re hungry and there isn’t any food around, acceptance might look like acknowledging that hunger and being okay with the discomfort until you can find food. We can’t be effective until we’ve accepted what is.

Back to the person cussing us out from above, we first have to accept that they’re doing this and how we feel about it in order to proceed forward. Then, we make a decision as to how to proceed from there. It might be walking away if we know saying something back in that moment won’t be helpful. We might choose to revisit the situation again later if it’s someone we have to encounter again. Or we might set a boundary, saying something like, “I’d love to continue this conversation with you when you can lower your voice and speak to me with respect.” 

If we don’t accept a particular situation or feeling, we often get stuck there. I see a lot of this in the current political climate. Just a lot of people tossing around insults and arguing back and forth without any acceptance of the current situation. There’s also no positive forward momentum. Almost no one would say that they like where we’re at or want to stay here, but acceptance doesn’t mean liking something or staying stuck. However, when we don’t acknowledge what is we often remain stuck. 

Essentially acceptance creates some space for us. That space is an opportunity to create something different regardless of how we experienced the previous moments. 

Acceptance isn’t easy. As I mentioned at the beginning, I’ve really been struggling with it, even intellectually knowing all of this. I’ve even had plenty of moments in which I accepted what I once couldn’t and experienced the freedom and ease that only exists when I accept what is. So at the moment I’m working toward accepting my frustration that I can’t accept all the rest, but I also have some comfort in knowing I’ve struggled in the past and eventually came to a place of acceptance. I imagine I’ll eventually get there this time around too.